4. LLMs for Musicians. Terry Ewell
shares strategies
for using AI for musicians to enhance their practice time, health, and
concert preparation. BDP 374, www.terryewell.com. 2026 Jan. 06.
<Music: Hummel’s Bassoon Concerto, Second Movement.
Terry B. Ewell and Peter Amstutz, Live Recording, Oct. 1997, Kent State
University. >
Welcome to this video on personal uses of LLMs, Large Language Models,
for musicians. I'm Terry Ewell. I've enjoyed a career of over 46 years
as an academic professor and as an orchestral musician. So some of the
things I'm going to share with you today build upon that past
knowledge, but also on some new skills I've just acquired this year by
using AI.
Now, think of the important distinction between knowledge and wisdom.
Fifty years ago, it used to be that knowledge was rather expensive or
difficult to obtain. You needed to go to a place with a large library.
You needed to be in touch with an expert. You needed to buy a book. Or
perhaps you needed to go to a university. But things changed with the
advent of the Internet and the World Wide Web. And since that time,
before 2000, we have seen that knowledge is far more accessible to
people. and as a result, cheaper as a commodity. And now more than
ever, in 2026, through the access of large language models, LLMs, or
artificial intelligence, knowledge is easy to capture.
However, the application of knowledge is not so easy. ChatGPT, for
instance, is more intelligent than any of us in the room. It has access
to knowledge that it can spit out in just seconds. However, ChatGPT and
other LLMs are really stupid as well. They do not know how to apply
this knowledge to real life situations. And so this is what I want you
to do as a musician to become very wise about how you apply this
knowledge in your life. It's your responsibility for knowing how to
apply this knowledge. You are the human in the loop. And you are the
one that needs to validate this. You need to be a professional about
how you use knowledge from LLMs in your life.
Now, before we start applying LLMs and I give you the prompts, let's
talk about some of the problems that can happen with that. First is
humanization of LLMs. We tend, as people, to view AI and other things
as personal like we are as people. And the more you converse, the more
you interact with your LLM model, the more you're going to want to
think of it as a person. And you must set up barriers for that. Here's
what I've done. Rather than speaking to it directly as I would to you,
I always type in through an interface, always through a computer. So
there's a certain distance there. Also, I never let it refer to me by
my first name. I always have it call me Doctor Ewell, so that there's
sort of a professional distance there. I also give it a name that is
one that is not used by anyone else in my life, and that probably
you're not even aware of a person ever using that name, so I've got
like a secret name for it that I use for it, and that creates a
distance as well. I have to work very diligently to make sure that I'm
not considering it a person.
Now, another thing to be aware of is that anything you post with
ChatGPT, other LLMs, is not really private. If you are not paying for a
subscription, especially everything you give to it is information of
that company and owned by that company and retained by that company. So
don't share anything personal, certainly in the three portals. Now, I
pay a subscription to ChatGPT, that's my solution, and I've decided
it's more benefit for me to give the personal information to get the
results that I need rather than abstaining from it altogether.
This video is a follow-up to the prior video where I talk about
prompts, and you'll need to see that for further details. Now, prompts
for musicians can follow this pattern.
We are going to use five principles that ChatGPT has given me. We are
going to talk through these now so that you understand what the prompts
look like, so you can develop a prompt that will help you with your
interaction with ChatGPT. Assume here that you are a violinist.
planning a performance of the first movement of Tchaikovsky's Violin
Concerto, and in six months you have that performance. So there's many
things you need to do.
First off, let's say you've mastered most of the notes and you're
familiar with them, but you haven't yet memorized them, and you need to
bring them up to performance speed. How can ChatGPT or something else
help you with that? Well, that's going to be our goal here now.
terrific! Let's get started on creating a prompt for the musician.
First, we're going to create a simple prompt that will give you videos,
articles, and books on the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto first movement.
So, the first prompt is specify the role explicitly. So, we're going to
say that ChatGPT is a university music professor in violin performance
and an expert on that literature. And it's important to do that so
ChatGPT will search in just a certain area rather than do a broad
search.
Next, we're going to define the task. So we're going to ask for a
listing of videos. listing of articles and books. And we want three
videos of the best versions of the first movement of the Tchaikovsky
Violin Concerto. And this is not based on the number of viewings, but
rather on the performer's expertise and reputation. That'll be
interesting to see what ChatGPT does with that.
And then we're going to constrain the output. We want the information
to be returned in a bibliography that conforms to MLA. 9 format and we
want Internet links provided. So here is all the prompts cut and pasted
there. So I'm going to cut and paste that. Next, I am going to insert
that here and let's see what comes up.
Well, let's see what it says. Got verified. scholarly-oriented
bibliography. And here is our bibliography. Great. Papers, books. Oh,
and there are the videos. Okay, so what I will do is go down here, copy
it, and then I will paste it into my document.
Okay, I've pasted this in a document. I'm going to go to File and Save
As and retain this for our next step. I've saved the file as a
bibliography. I've got three other files we'll discuss just a little
bit later.
Okay, now we're going to work on the prompt for your musician's coach.
We're specifying the role. This is a university professor. Notice here
it is an expert. This professor is an expert in coaching musicians on
how to practice without injury. and a motivational master, keeping
practice sessions interesting. I love interesting practice sessions,
and I hate boring ones.
Next, we're going to define the tasks. Look at the responsibilities
here. We're going to be providing a daily practice schedule for up to
one month, building on the memorization of the first two pages of that
violin concerto. Keeping track of the amount of time, memorization
success, tracking performance, injuries, other health concerns are also
being tracked.
We're going to constrain this, the output. We're going to put it in a
table that's loaded every day, and there's going to be a three-day
running table and advice given in the table. This is the context. This
is really important. We are going to upload documents on memorization,
the bibliography, the table sample, and also this rating system for
physical and emotional health. I will be talking about that in a
moment. I want the feedback to be honest and encouraging. Here's the
table that I'm going to ask it to create that you would fill out every
day. You give the date. We'll talk about that. You'll put down your
weight. Workout, that would be what you're doing today. Running,
jogging, elliptical, all of that. Your sleep, your practice session
time. what passages you've memorized, the temple. So maybe over a month
you want to increase the temple from, let's say, 116 to 132, and then
other comments that you have in here.
Let's go on to what is meant by physical/emotional. I find this
extremely helpful. I rate myself everyday. How do I feel physically
when I wake up in the morning? Do I rate it as a 10, meaning optimal?
I've got no pain whatsoever. Very good. Maybe just a little stiffness
or something. No real injury concerns, just slight fatigue. Maybe good
but managed and things like that. Then I give it a 7 if I really have
some soreness or tightness. You might have an issue with your elbow in
your bowing arm, things like that. If I have, you know, six means
really starting to limit things and looking at changing the way I
practice and exercise. Then 5 is poor, 4 is just simply not trainable
there. Then I also assess myself emotionally. How am I feeling in the
morning? Am I feeling calm and focused? Do I have a little bit of
stress? Am I functional but much more stressed and strained? You can
see a 6 is very pressured. Am I on overload? Am I absolutely burnt out?
So, this numbering system also will guide your coach on how best to
tailor your practice sessions and things like that.
So once again, I've gathered all the prompts together. I'm going to cut
this and then paste it into ChatGPT. And we just put it right there.
Put that in there. and then I click on this plus to add the files.
Okay, and here are the four files I want to upload for it to work.
Press open. You can see it's now loading these files here. It's going
around there and click to upload.
Okay, this is sort of exciting here. Look at this. It's got five parts
here. Practice architecture, daily practice template, a Monday
integration with the bibliography and everything in there. Three-day
running table, immediate coaching and feedback. Look at that. Week one.
It's even got, wow, for a whole, whole month going here. Okay. And oh,
it's got things to do, physical preparation, all of that. Look at that.
Non-negotiable, yeah. You have to eliminate. Look at that. It's got
analytical memory things, oral memory. It's got a kinetic memory thing,
all taken from that memory article I authored.
Oh, look at this. You're going to listen to Heifetz on Monday. You're
going to study the String Magazine article by Niles on runs. You can do
the Auer Urtext article.
Wow, there's some great stuff here. Look at that. Doing the right
thing. Okay, encouraging. Okay, it's got the steps here. So, you have
to now fill out your table and enter the log and start this whole
project. Wow, this is exciting. So, you can copy it here and then paste
it in a separate document. Remember, you're the human in the loop. and
you must use wisdom as to how to apply the information given to you.
This could be information about how to avoid tendonitis. This could be
information about how to memorize better. You need to know what will
work in your particular case.
Now, please visit my website, which provides some additional prompts
and other information on AI.
As you can see, an LLM is a powerful tool that can help you progress in
your profession and help you develop more quickly as a musician. I hope
that this video has been helpful to you. Thank you. Bye.
<Music: Hummel’s Bassoon Concerto, Second Movement.
Terry B. Ewell and Peter Amstutz, Live Recording, Oct. 1997, Kent State
University. >